Come To Me
by Arianrhod1
Summary: Brennan's powers are putting too much stress on his body, and then everything falls apart when he and Jesse are captured...
1. Control

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Come To Me

Author: Arianrhod

Disclaimer: I don't own them and I'm sure not getting any money for this.

Warnings: PG-13 for language and violence, probably

Author's note: This will be B/S but it is primarily a Brennan story. I also like E/J and E/A but there probably won't be too much of that. I'm open to many pairings, though, so suggestions are welcome!

This is dedicated to my friend Katzchen, who better read this.

Hope you enjoy this and please review!

Email feedback to heraldkyt@yahoo.com.

Wrapped pleasantly in the land between consciousness and oblivion, he breathed slowly and easily. The silence and darkness were comforting and constant, a haven to return to after stress and daily fighting. Here there was nothing to fight, his power swaying lazily inside him, his subconscious firmly in control, keeping it inside and at bay. But if he were to creep up a little farther, if he were to gasp for air he would have to begin the fight again, every morning, everyday. But here it was quiet, he didn't want…

"Brennan? Brennan, wake up man, we gotta go."

Instinct forced him to the surface, forced him to take a moment to viciously clamp down on the force inside. He wouldn't let himself harm Jesse, not after last time..

"Uuuhh, Jesse, I'm up. Give me a minute." Brennan mumbled, hoping Jesse would keep his distance until Brennan had his powers firmly in control. It was getting harder and harder each morning.

"I'll give you thirty seconds. We have to meet one of Adam's contacts in twenty minutes." Brennan looked up. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light and he saw Jesse leaning on the doorframe, looking a little impatient.

"Alright, alright, I remember. Go tell Adam and the girls I'll be ready in five." Brennan swung his legs off the bed and with his right hand searched for a shirt. Coming up with a plain black t-shirt that was probably not too dirty, he pulled it over his head and made his way to the pair of jeans he had thrown on the floor last night. He grimaced slightly as he pulled them on- his muscles had been sore lately, his entire body tense for every waking moment. He was to afraid to loosen up. Scared he would loose control again.

Brennan slowly walked to the bathroom, and moved quietly to a sink. Sometimes Sanctuary seemed to silent, and any noise seemed to offend the place… he splashed some water over his head and was instantly gratified and the cold liquid made his electrical current dull and fuzzy in the back of his mind. He exited the bathroom to join the team in the lab.

As soon as Brennan entered the lab, Adam and the others went silent. The atmosphere was tinged with a bit of shame, and Adam could see that Brennan picked up on it immediately.

"So either you were conspiring without me or you were talking about me." Brennan's gaze focused on Adam. Oh yeah, he knew.

"Brennan…" Shalimar's tone was a warning. Brennan was always very touchy about this kind of thing.

"Look, Shal, I don't know what you were talking about before I came in here. Either spit it out or let's get on with it." Brennan looked at each of their faces. Emma looked suitably guilty, Jesse was looking at Adam expectantly, and Shalimar was looking at him, face unreadable. Adam took a step forward.

"Brennan, I know your control is deteriorating again. Your last scan and recent test indicate that you are losing control over the voltage you give off and your brain is having trouble balancing your electrical current and your normal nervous system activity."

Brennan focused his eyes and the wall just behind Adam's right ear. He should have known they would be right to the point. So could he. "I take it Emma doesn't have a quick fix for it this time?"

"No. It's not so much as a change in your power as a instability. Your nervous system is worn out from constantly maintaining itself and your control. It needs to be healed." Adam glanced at the silent redhead.

"I wouldn't know what to do." Emma's voice was slightly choked and she refused to make eye contact with Brennan.

"Brennan, after what happened last time, I know what you're feeling. You think that without your powers, you're not a part of the team, that you'll lose your friends, or that they're all more worried about their own powers mutating than you. You want to keep going out into the field because it gives you a feeling of purpose and you want to prove that you're just as useful without your powers."

Adam stopped for a moment to let this sink in. He knew it was the truth, he knew it because Brennan's eyes were glossing over. After knowing him for two years, Adam knew that Brennan's eyes were the only place where his emotions could be seen when he was trying to hide them.

"We may have another cure, Bren, but it's not the easiest one." Shalimar continued for Adam, hoping that Brennan would take the news easier from her then he would from Adam. Maybe, just maybe, if Brennan thought that his friends were with him on this, he wouldn't be so pigheaded.

She walked over to him and forced him to meet her gaze. "This will work. I'm going to tell you what you need to do, and then you can't voice your concerns."

Brennan had not said a word, but Shalimar, too, saw something flash through his eyes and knew that he was beginning to open up to them. Slowly. It made her heart lift a little. Brennan was always there for them but rarely would he let anyone be there for him if he was hurt. It hurt them all when he closed himself off. He had to know they were here for him, he had to know they were a team, he had to be able to go on, for what she was about to tell him…

"Brennan, we need to put in a subdermal governor. It will keep your powers from interfering with your body's natural electrical signals long enough for them to recover. Once they are recovered, you will be able to consciously maintain control as easily as you could before. Please, Brennan, it will work, we have to try." Shalimar emphasized the 'we'. They were all in this together.

Brennan took a step back, his stance was defensive and his icy stare accusing. "Oh, I have no doubt that it will work, Shal. It sounds good. But I swore, the day I left Genomex, that I would die before I would let someone else have control over my powers. I would die before I let someone with a remote lay me out on the floor."

Shal kept walking towards him. "Brennan-"

He cut her off swiftly, and she almost started crying herself when she saw tears building in his eyes. "Shal, you've never actually had one used on you, have you?"

"No, but Jesse has. Emma has!"

"No, Shal, I mean have you ever had Eckhart standing over explaining to you, while you're writing on the floor in pain, that the bolt that they just slammed through your neck will effective make you their slave? I-"Brennan nearly gagged on his last word and a tear slid out of the corner of his right eye.

"God, Brennan, did you ever tell any of us? Maybe you weren't part of the team at the time, but you are now, and we would have wanted to know. Brennan, you may not think your pain matters, but it does to us!" Shalimar had to stop and look away. Even though Genomex was gone, it was still such a hard subject for them all.

Emma stood up. Brennan needed all of their support. "This isn't the same, Bren. You will be here, not at Genomex. You are not a prisoner here, you're among friends. We would do this so you won't hurt yourself or others, and your body will get the time it needs to heal. Please, Brennan, I know you're tired. You're tired of being tense, of being on your guard, and I know that you're tired of trying to push us away so that you won't hurt us." Emma walked over to him and put a hand on his arm.

"You'll have the remote for the governor, Brennan. No one will be able to use it but you, so in case you need to use your powers for a short time, you'll be able to reactivate them yourself." Jesse added his voice for support. He could see Brennan starting to give in to their rational argument.

Brennan turned away from them and rested his head on the wall. It was cool and hard and he could focus his thoughts better without looking at the pleading faces of his team— his family.

"Alright." He murmured softly, closing his eyes. "But I don't want you guys here. Let me do this part alone."

Adam stepped forward in protest, but Shal turned him around and warned him back with a look. She knew that Brennan would probably not want to be alone with Adam when he was the most vulnerable.

"I'll do it." She said. Brennan turned around and their eyes locked. The blond feral held his gaze with no room for objections, and though Brennan's eyes showed fear and slight anger, she knew there was gratitude there.

"Well, no funny business you two, Brennan and I still have a date with one of Adam's cronies. So, no ki-" Jesse joked as Emma and Adam filed out of the room. Everyone grinned and a bit of the tension was lost. Adam hauled Jesse out the door behind him.

"Ready to do this?" Shalimar guided Brennan to the lab chair.

"Sure. Just a pinch, right?" He said cockily.

"It'll be over quicker than one of Jesse's lewd jokes." The feral unlocked on of the cabinets and grabbed the implanting gun from inside. She walked quickly over to Brennan. "Ready?"

"Stop asking and go for it. I want to be able to rela- ah!" Brennan grunted and rocked away from her in pain. She had done it, gotten it over with as quickly as she could.

Brennan screwed his face up and pushed the pain back slowly.

"Brennan, breath." He jerked his eyes open in surprise. Shal was in front of him now, her face close to his, etched with concern.

"Right… right…" Brennan made moves to stand up. He felt strangely empty, his power but an echo. But the tension, the constant up-tightness that he'd been living with for weeks, was also just a faint memory. His entire spine was throbbing, but he felt remarkably well. He was afraid that he would have flashbacks to the nightmare time he had spent in GSA hands, but it was so hard to remember Eckhart's voice when Shalimar was with him. Shalimar. _She's always been here for me, hasn't she, _Brennan thought. Suddenly he realized that she was awfully close to him, her earthy smell livening his senses. They'd always shared something, but…

Was it just him, or was she moving closer. She made him feel safe, she made him feel like he should take her in his arms and keep her safe…

__

This is crazy! He thought. _I've always felt this way, but now…now it seems like it might actually work._

Brennan realized that her hand was in his, and they were both gripping each other tightly. _Is this just because we've shared this moment, or is it because I'm not worrying about myself, my control?_

"We should, we should really go. You need to go." Shalimar said. She knew that there was something happening between them, but fortunately she was comfortable knowing that it would still be there when he got back. It would always be there.

"Yeah. Jesse probably thinks we're-" He trailed off, grinning.

"I'm sure." She returned his smile with one of her own, just as wide. "Oh, here's the remote." She slid the small piece of metal into his hand, and squeezed it before withdrawing. She walked out of the lab and towards the couches where the rest of the team was sitting. From the sound of, Jesse really hadn't laid of the joke cracking. And most of them didn't sound to clean, either.

Brennan hung back a little, inspecting the device that was partially responsible for the odd numbness he felt down his spinal cord, in the back of his head, and in his hands. He wondered if the subdermal governor was causing it, or whether it was just his subconscious nervousness.

He shook his head and followed in Shalimar's wake.

Jesse and Brennan had been waiting at the intersection of two very deserted back-country roads for nearly and hour. Adam had assured them that the contact was coming. This particular contact refused to meet Adam himself, in case someone saw them together, but would talk to two members of Mutant X. Supposedly whoever it was had information on a government program that was capturing new mutants and making them agents of the government. Unlike Genomex, this alleged agency wasn't imprisoning or experimenting on any mutants, it was simply capturing them, and then some time later they would reappear as agents of the Secret Service, the CIA, spies, cops, detectives, soldiers, politicians, lawyers. It was, frankly, not something Jesse was inclined to believe, but Adam deemed it worth checking out.

He and Brennan had been sparing for nearly fifteen minutes now. Jesse was attempting to show Brennan that he was still a valuable team member, even without the ability to shoot lightning from his hands. Jesse was doing this by allowing Brennan to kick his butt.

"Woah!" Jesse cursed as Brennan flipped over his head and kicked at the backs of his knees, and Jesse fell to the ground.

Brennan grinned and looked down on the molecular, who was sitting flabbergasted in the middle of the dirt road. "Sorry, must have caught you by surprise." He put his hands in his pockets nonchalantly. "Need a hand up?"

"Oh-ho, no. I'm fine." Jesse answered, smirking up at the cocky elemental. Brennan seemed to be back to his old self, and Jesse realized that it had been a while since Brennan had been joking around with him, and sparring for fun. Jesse tried not to wince when he thought about how much Brennan must have fought to keep himself under control as he felt his powers threaten to race out of control… again.

"Oh, no." Brennan began to swear loudly and look around himself frantically.

"What?" Jesse said, pushing himself up off the ground quickly.

"I can't find the remote. It must have slipped out of my pocket when I flipped..!" Brennan searched the area desperately. "I can't-"

"Find this?" Both of them snapped around on the defensive at the sound of a strange voice from the road behind them. Jesse turned, looking for the speaker, but just as he saw the man dressed in a black suit holding up the subdermal governor remote, Brennan collapsed on the ground next to him, screaming from the pain as the device was activated.

Before Jesse could make a move in any direction, the world went dark.


	2. Face Off and Down

A/n: Thank you for the reviews! I was overwhelmed and crazily happy reading all of them, please keep it up. This chapter may or may not be confusing, but all of it has a purpose (I hope…) in the end, so bear with me if possible. I also give you my desperate apologies for the months it took for me to upload this chapter… very sorry!

Content Warning: Some swearing and violence, read at own discretion, naturally…

This time, consciousness did not come as a gentle progression towards sensory awareness. It was a sharp, uninvited crash into the real world. 

Jesse shook his throbbing head. _Oh no… _

"You can open your eyes."

Brennan winced. He had been attempting to mask his recent recovery, but again _he _had immediately seen through the bluff.

"Go get scre-" Brennan moaned in frustration, but lost his words to the returning flood of pain.

"Not before you, Mr. Mulwray."

Jesse had been nursing his throbbing head for no more than five minutes when the door on the far side of the room opened.

The room was sparse but it was not a cell. The floor was roughly carpeted and a graying army cot, which Jesse had just awoken on, was shoved against the far wall.

A man and a woman strode through the door, the man shutting it smartly behind him. The woman did not stop but walked purposefully next to Jesse and placed a gun next to his temple. Jesse froze and stayed silent. Wherever he was, whatever was going to happen… none of it was under his control anymore. He fought the urge to flinch.

The man paced for a minute in front of where the molecular and the woman stayed unmoving. _Probably trying to increase his feeling of control over me. _Jesse thought numbly. _That bastard._

Time, immeasurable, passed and finally the man turned to face Jesse. He was clean shaven and well dressed. _A suit. He's wearing a suit._ Jesse resisted another shudder at the memories of the GSA. _Not again._

The man smiled. It was a nice smile, no hidden maliciousness, no covered emotions. "I'm sure you don't want to be here right now, but you have no choice so let us move beyond that, shall we?" His voice was pleasant and his words well formed. Jesse felt his dread growing with each word.

"Both you and you're friend have been entered into our normal program. This is Caroline, the agent who will be assisting you through the process. We know that your friend, Brennan, has some… unique abilities. He has already professed that you have none, and as he was under duress we are inclined to believe him. Do you have anything to say on the topic?" The man smiled again.

It was hard for his tired, aching head to process this. _Captured by an unknown enemy. Separated from the rest of the team._ Jesse tried desperately to make sense of anything, to make a plan of action. _Under duress…unique abilities. Oh._

"No. It was just him." He dared not shake his head with the gun still paralyzing him. Apparently these people did not know Adam or Mutant X. Brennan must have had a good reason for lying.

"Good." The man turned and left. Jesse heard an electronic lock engage after he shut the door. He closed his eyes. The gun was stilled pressed to his temple.

After close to five minutes of sitting there, he felt Caroline remove the gun. Slowly opening his eyes, he saw her in front of him, standing right where the man had been. She was also wearing a suit, and was as well groomed as the man. She was also incredibly non-descript. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes, middle aged, not ugly, not beautiful… she still had the gun pointed at him, aimed right in between his eyes.

"You will be treated here by me for a week and then trained at another facility for another week. Then you will be placed on active duty. Your friend will kept and should you act up, he will be punished. Swallow these now, please." She lowered her gun and re-holstered it, holding out three small pills to him.

"I'm sorry, my parents always said 'never take drug from strangers'," Jesse muttered, and finally decided on action. Surging up from where he sat, he swatted her hand away and backhanded her. She stumbled sideways, her brown hair flying into her eyes, and Jesse lunged for her gun. 

Jesse's hand closed over the gun when suddenly her foot slammed into his gut and drove him back into the wall. She kept it there and ruthlessly pressed his stomach into the wall as he frantically tried to drag air back into his lungs.

When Jesse looked up at her, her eyes were flashing a feral gold. The smile was gone.

She removed her foot and he fell to the floor. Before he could regain enough strength to fight again, the electronic lock had deactivated and two men in army guard uniforms ran into the room. Jesse didn't have time to resist as they grabbed his arms and secured him against the wall.

Caroline had straightened herself again and bent to retrieve the three pills from the ground. She walked over to Jesse, dusting the pills off lightly and with care.

"I'm sorry." Caroline said, looking honestly apologetic. Jesse fought and struggled against the guards as she closed his nose with two of her fingers, placed the pills in his mouth and then covered it before he could spit them out.

__

What can I do? Jesse thought desperately, and within thirty seconds he was unconscious.

-72 hours earlier-

Brennan regained consciousness long before they moved him from the car to the room where he was now. He kept his eyes half shut for the benefit of those who still thought he was out cold, but his mind was racing, trying to remember the passing hallways and plan an escape. For both him and Jesse.

As they pulled the still unconscious Jesse into room, Brennan had to clench his teeth and fight the urge to struggle towards him. _Escape plan now_, he told himself. _Escape later._

Minutes and endless non-descript hallways later, Brennan was slung onto a couch. Something gripped his neck and again he ground his teeth to keep from crying out as the subdermal governor was ripped from his skin. 

As soon as he heard the door slam after the last of the lackeys of whoever owned the nice couch in this spectacularly clean and corporate office, Brennan opened his eyes. His gaze immediately caught that of a smiling, well-groomed man behind a large oak desk. His hair was all in place, his suit was all in order, his smile was painfully genuine.

"I'm not sure what this is or what it was doing, but no one can start in the program who had already been modified. Unfortunately, we didn't know quite how to remove it. I hope it wasn't too painful." The man indicate the small amount of blood on the end of the governor.

Brennan's hand immediately went to the back of his neck. A small smear of red came of into his palm. _Oh great. This is just great._ Brennan thought, carefully keeping his face as blank as he could.

The man said nothing more. He just sat there as though he were inspecting Brennan or was waiting to see what he might do.

__

He doesn't know how the governor works, or why, he can't know that I could be out of here now that he's removed it for me… Brennan tried to concentrate, something about this situation didn't fit right in his mind. _Maybe he knows that it's for mutants, but he can't know me or what I can do…And there's no time like the present to get out of here._

Brennan shot out his hands- one towards the door to take care of any lock that might slow him down, and one to deliver a controlled shock to his now-smirking host. Hopefully striking the man at least unconscious by the blow, Brennan was on his feet and had pounded through the door within seconds. He wished he could be more sure that he had taken care of the man, but without the governor his powers might overload still if he dealt too hard a blow…

The immediate vicinity was clear of people. Brennan wasted no time. He had to find Jesse, and if Jesse wasn't conscious, he would lose a lot of the momentum of speed and surprise.

He got to the end of the hallway before he was stopped. _Damn, security guards._ Brennan's fist took care of the first one, but there was a second and a third, and he couldn't, he _wouldn't_ trust himself to take them all out with a tesla coil.

Desperately, he shoved one of the guards into the others. They all momentarily stumbled, and Brennan ran backwards to the end of the hallway and looked out the window there. He was on the first story. Pure luck.

__

I will pay for this big time. Brennan grimaced as he used his elbow to break the window. _But not right now._ The guards had caught up with him, but all he could do was deliver a kick to the first one and then dive out the window.

Rolling as soon as he hit the ground, Brennan was swiftly on his feet. He tasted blood in his mouth. He glanced at his hands. They were cut and bloody. _Later_, he repeated to himself. The guards slowed down as they tried to negotiate themselves through the window without cutting themselves on the glass as Brennan had.

__

Oh, god, I have to get back in for Jesse. As the first guard freed himself, Brennan tensed for the attack, but froze.

The cold reality of a gun pressed to the back of his head stopped him in his tracks. A familiar, smiling voice came from behind him.

"That went so much smoother and quicker than I thought it would."

Brennan refused to reply. His breath was still coming ragged and hard.

"Of course, by now you must know that I do indeed know what you can do. But now that you've escaped from this facility, I can take you into my personal custody. Your talents will be utilized much more there, I believe." The smile never left the voice. "This went very well, yes, quite well…"

And as the butt of the gun came crashing into the side of his face and he greeted darkness for the second time that day, Brennan silently recognized how this was all going to play out.


End file.
